VisasQ Inc. Q2 FY2026 earnings call

• Overall Growth Strategy & 2025 Key Initiatives

  • The company pursues a dual-axis growth strategy, prioritizing domestic growth while also pursuing growth in the US (the world's largest expert network market) to deliver global expertise to Japanese clients. The company does not consider overseas business as its core focus.
  • The Knowledge Platform segment is executing customer-segmented growth strategies, with Q2 seeing a recovery to positive YoY growth in the previously underperforming target enterprise segment, and all new product initiatives progressing on schedule.

• AI Impact on Core Business

  • Management expects expert interview demand will increase, not decrease, with AI advancement. AI has homogenized publicly available information, increasing demand for uncodified, real-time, niche expert insight that cannot be generated by AI. B2B user interviews for niche products are hard for AI to replace due to limited training data, and expert advice for high-stakes business decision-making will remain in demand until AI reaches a level of reliability sufficient for corporate approval processes.
  • Management is investing heavily in AI to improve productivity: AI is being used to lower barriers to entry for non-research users (supporting expert selection, question drafting, interview transcription and summary generation), improve self-matching algorithms, and enable new product development. In the US Global ENS business, AI is already driving measurable productivity improvements by helping identify optimal experts faster even when matching outside the internal database.

• New Product Launches

  • ビザスクproject (VisasQ project): Launched for full-service consulting needs, with VisasQ internal consultants leading end-to-end project delivery. The service has already begun delivering client projects and has a strong pipeline of incoming inquiries, on track with plans.
  • ビザスクtech (VisasQ tech): Re-branded from the former working title VisasQ IT Partner, launched in June 2025 for IT industry outsourced work. The re-positioning has already driven new inbound inquiries, progressing on plan.
  • ビザスクL&D (VisasQ L&D): Formalized training and development service launched in September 2025, combining group training on interview technique with expert interviews to build employee skills. The service was launched in time for corporate annual training planning cycles and is already receiving inquiries, progressing on plan.
  • ビザスクdirect (VisasQ direct): Rebuilt from the former VisasQ lite, launched in September 2025 to support all forms of expert matching including mid-career hiring and outsourced work, in addition to expert interviews. The service requires corporate registration (vs individual registration for the prior version) and has added monthly recurring SaaS-based self-matching features, a new business model for the company. It has added ~500 new corporate users in its initial launch, with a solid start.

1. ナレッジプラットフォーム事業 (Knowledge Platform Business): Reported +8% YoY growth in both transaction value and operating revenue for Q2, accelerating from Q1's slower growth. Growth companies within the segment achieved 23% YoY transaction value growth.
2. Global ENS Japan Business: Continued steady growth, though overall progress is slightly below plan. The segment is currently focused on strengthening hiring to unlock its full potential.
3. Global ENS Overseas Business: Overall operating conditions remain challenging across most non-US regions, with progress below plan. The US segment, the company's largest overseas market, has recovered to -2% YoY decline (a strong improvement from prior deeper declines) driven by productivity improvements from in-house AI tool adoption.

Aggregated Q2 2025 consolidated results: Total consolidated transaction value reached 3.459 billion yen, flat YoY and recovering to prior year levels. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 0.17 billion yen, and consolidated net profit was 0.1 billion yen, both up YoY driven by productivity improvements in the US and disciplined corporate cost management.

• Management confirmed that overall profit progress is in line with plan for the full fiscal year ending February 2026. The apparent gap between reported net profit and full-year guidance is due to conservative upfront estimation of corporate income tax, which does not reflect underlying performance.
• The company targets further transaction value recovery in the second half of the fiscal year, starting from Q3.
• All key growth initiatives, including new product development and AI investment, are proceeding generally in line with their original planned timelines, with only minor localized deviations from plan.

• Non-US Global ENS overseas markets continue to face challenging operating conditions, with performance below plan.
• Global ENS Japan's growth is constrained by under-hiring, which has held progress below initial expectations.
• The Knowledge Platform segment has not yet met its internal hiring targets for the period, with headcount slightly below plan.
• The company's share price has hit an all-time low post-IPO, which management acknowledges is unsatisfactory, though management maintains that delivering sustainable business growth will ultimately drive share price improvement.

Q: With stricter market capitalization requirements for the Tokyo Growth market coming, does VisasQ need to stay listed in Japan? If overseas business is strategically important, have you considered listing on an overseas exchange amid the current weak share price? / A: Management reaffirms the company’s long-standing dual-axis growth strategy, where domestic growth is the first priority. Overseas growth is valuable because it allows Japanese clients to access global expertise, and the US (as the world’s largest expert network market) is a worthwhile growth opportunity, but overseas business is not considered the core of the business. Therefore, there is no rationale for relisting overseas. Management acknowledges the current weak share price is deeply disappointing, but believes that delivering sustained business growth will naturally increase market capitalization, and there is no conflict between growth targets and market capitalization improvement. Changing the listing status would create significant unnecessary work with no clear benefit, so the company will continue to deliver growth while listed in Japan, and work to deliver share price appreciation through operational performance.

Q: Will AI replace VisasQ’s core expert interview service? / A: Management concludes that AI will increase, not reduce, demand for expert interviews. As AI makes all standardized information more widely accessible, differentiation increasingly relies on uncodified, real-time niche expert insight that cannot be generated by AI. For B2B niche market user research, there is not enough training data for AI to replace interviews, and for high-stakes corporate decision-making, expert opinion will remain required for internal approval until AI reaches a much higher level of reliability. Early adoption of AI in the US business has not reduced interview demand, and clients are instead asking how to improve productivity to support more interviews.

Q: What growth opportunities does AI create for VisasQ? / A: AI creates three key domestic growth opportunities: it lowers the barrier to entry for non-research clients by automating preparation work (expert selection, question drafting, transcription) which expands the potential user base; it improves the quality of self-service matching on the new VisasQ direct platform; and it enables development of entirely new products that make expert knowledge more accessible to clients. For the Global ENS business, AI improves matching productivity for both the company and its clients, which already driving measurable results in the US, enabling more interviews to be completed from a smaller pipeline of projects.